


Left Behind

by phrenitis



Category: Fringe
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2010-12-21
Updated: 2010-12-21
Packaged: 2017-10-14 22:11:31
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 536
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/154016
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/phrenitis/pseuds/phrenitis
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>She tells herself it’s just temporary.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Left Behind

**Author's Note:**

> Spoilers: Season Three, _Entrada_

_“And I’ll find strength in pain  
And I will change my ways  
I’ll know my name as it’s called again”  
\-- Mumford & Sons, ‘The Cave’_

==

She steps back into her life quietly – never missed, never forgotten, no one aware of the sacrifices – and she shrugs away questioning thoughts that creep unwelcome into her mind. She knows reality and her expectations are at odds.

“You seem different today,” Charlie tells her when they’re driving to the case site. “Are you okay?”

Lincoln smirks, gives her a wink. “Crazy people are always okay, right ‘Liv?”

“Right,” she says, and tries to smile, tries to be a part of the moment that’s not hers. She’s home, but she finds she’s playing a cover here now, too.

She tells herself it’s just temporary.

==

At home, there is a message from her mom asking why she didn’t show up to dinner. Frank’s left a note that says _you too_. Clothes, toiletries, dishes, and food are all rearranged and foreign.

It’s her house, and she feels like she’s just arrived on the other side.

Walter explains the necessity, the deception always his intention, and doesn’t allow room for questions. “She had to believe she was you,” he says firmly, offers no further insight.

It’s Frank who mentions the tattoo, the lack of one, his fingers heavy across the back of her neck. His touch is strange, almost unfamiliar, but she reaches up to put her hand over his.

“I needed a change,” she explains for his benefit. The other Olivia wears her tattoo now, lives in the house she kept, and the thought is sour.

“It’s a new you,” he says warmly.

==

Details from the other side are left out of her report. It’s not wholly intentional – she doesn’t want to dwell on the day to day trivialities, and there are more than a few. The relationship with Peter is excluded deliberately.

 _It was nothing of consequence_ , she thinks.

==

A man stops her on the street. “Olivia? What are you doing here?”

“Do I know you?” She has no memory of this man, but the meeting suddenly unnerves her. There’s something about his expression that tells her she should remember him, that this is important.

He looks surprised, then wary. “Sorry, I think I made a mistake.”

He’s lost to the crowd before she can question him any further.

With her descriptions and Astrid’s probabilities, she narrows him down to a Henry Arliss Higgins. She erases the search records, holds his name in her head.

==

They all work – endlessly, tirelessly – and she is injected with bags of fluid to assist in the efforts against the other side ( _Olivia Dunham_ is listed on each bag, and she knows what this means).

“It’s us or them,” Walter says to everyone. “They are merely imposters.”

The drugs work in time, incredibly brief moments of transport that go unregistered. There are glimpses of the other side – blurs of color and images that are unrecognizable individually, but together paint a world she remembers all too clearly.

She thinks about Peter, knows there is no saving both universes in the scenario being proposed, and she feigns disappointment at the end of the test.

“Nothing happened,” she reports, shrugs.

 

 _-Fin_


End file.
